


Frequent Flyer

by Cerusee



Category: Superman (Comics), Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Just a dab of angst, and mentally refers to all airports by their IATA codes, clark has opinions about traveling by airplane, has getting through security down to an exact science, lois is probably one of those people who makes every flight by the skin of her teeth, they are decidedly negative, tw: claustrophobia/panic attack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 08:44:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14398458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerusee/pseuds/Cerusee
Summary: Who knew Clark Kent would turn out to be a nervous flyer?





	Frequent Flyer

MPE was bustling with activity, as usual, people endlessly trundling from one point to another, dodging to a bathroom, or a restaurant, trickling inwards through security, or out a gate, the messy traffic even more disrupted when an airport vehicle would buzz through the steady wave of humanity, flowing in all directions at all times.

They’d made it past the TSA and through the crowds, and were sitting at their gate, a full thirty minutes before boarding—a complete waste of time, in Lois’s opinion—but Clark still had the jittery look of a man who wasn’t sure his toiletries were going to come in under the limit.

“You seem nervous, Smallville,” she said, lightly.

Clark grimaced. “I’m a not a good flyer.”

“You?”

He cleared his throat. “It’s just...small spaces. Being up that high. Those things, together.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed that,” she said, amused. Sure, he came from a hick town somewhere out in Kansas, but he’d been with the Planet long enough to have traveled a fair amount, and he’d never objected to overseas trips before.

But had he ever traveled with another reporter? She couldn’t remember him ever having done so. It wasn’t like she kept tabs on the guy, but…

 _Oh,_ she thought, and she suddenly realized.

She didn’t say anything while they boarded. She took the aisle seat, which was his, and shepherded him into her coveted window seat, just to make things a little easier. 

Clark gave her a pained smile, but didn’t argue.

She leaned forward and nudged the little paper bag in the seat pocket in front of them up a few centimeters.

Clark was already deep into a crossword puzzle, and ignoring her. All right. Lois pulled out her phone, and pulled up the draft of her story about the bodega on 27th and Kirby that was being pulled between the mob and the MCPD.

She lost herself, working on it, until a flight attendant tapped her on the shoulder, and reminded her to turn off her phone. Lois rolled her eyes, and conspicuously went through the motions of putting the phone in airplane mode.

It wasn’t like it even _mattered_ ; there was absolutely zero chance of her smartphone fucking up the transmissions of the plane. The worst thing that would happen if she didn’t was that she’d drain the hell out of the battery, leaving it on, while it repeatedly tried and failed to connect to a cell satellite. And she could as easily work on her story with stored notes as…

Lois realized that her companion was not calm.

His hands weren’t clamped over the arms of the seat, not quite. They were stiff as stone, just grazing over the plastic, but not fully touching. His back was stiff as a rod, and his eyes were clamped shut. His nostrils were flared. He was breathing very quickly, but lightly, tiny breaths and out through his nose.

Not air sickness after all, dammit. Clark was really distressed. For a moment, she swung her gaze wildly around, as if there was some easy solution to be found in the cabin of the plane, and then she made herself focus on her partner.

“Are you doing okay there, Smallville?” she said, lightly.

Clark either didn’t hear her, or he was ignoring her.

“Come on, farm boy,” Lois said, and she put her hand over his, his hand that wasn’t quite touching the armrest. 

“ _Clark,_ ” she said, and then his hand suddenly turned over and interlaced with hers, faster than she could follow, and he shuddered and bent over, his head resting against the seat in front of him.

***

It wasn’t a memory.

It was a sensation. Or maybe it was a memory. Human babies didn’t remember things, but he was not, as he was reminded, every five seconds or so, _actually_ human.

It was just something that he didn’t like.

And it didn’t matter. It almost never came up. It didn’t matter whether he minded this or not. Most of the time.

“We’re going _where?_ ” Clark unfolded the little paper airplane Lois had launched at his head, and was staring at it. The question was, at best, rhetorical. He was holding a business class ticket to Lahore.

“Pakistan,” Lois said, leaning over the shared wall of their cubicle, with a huge grin. “That piece we did on bride trafficking three months ago—”

“I recall,” Clark said.

“The response had been _very_ good, and it’s created some new… _avenues_ that Perry wants us to follow up on. So pack a bag, Smallville. We’ve got a flight to catch.” Lois winked at him, then sailed off, probably to pack her own bag.

Clark sat down, heavily.

Some of their sources in Pakistan were Clark’s and Clark’s alone; they wouldn’t speak to anybody else, much less to Lois. He ought to go. He needed to go.

He was going to have to go with _Lois._

Normally there wasn’t anybody he’d enjoy traveling with more, but—

It was just a sensation he didn’t like.

***

There was so much _fussing_ involved in air transit. 

(Not flying. He’d never call it that. None of them knew what flying actually felt like. Flying wasn’t a tube of metal, it was sixty-thousand miles per hour of the atmosphere dragging ever so slightly over your cheeks, and then the sudden cessation of all movement when you just stopped and hovered in the upper reaches the atmosphere, basking in unfiltered sunshine, opening your eyes and looking into the heart of the light.)

Traveling by plane meant walking everywhere and never getting to take a shortcut, because everything was being recorded. And the finicky pretense of having exactly the right things in the bag: enough to seem like a normal traveller, one who intended to live out his or her days and return alive from their journey, but not too much of the things that tripped the alarms, these days. What was the right amount of shampoo? It wasn’t like he used the stuff.

Then there was the waiting around the boarding area, assuming you got there early, which Lois apparently didn’t like to do. Airports were too closely monitored for easy superspeed exits and entrances, if one was attempting to maintain a civilian persona on site. Which meant Clark was _stuck_. It didn’t matter what disasters or tragedies unfolded within his hearing, he couldn’t go after them without the risk of revealing himself.

For hours.

And then there was the actual airplane. He just didn’t care for it, not at all. It was too small, and too crowded. A lot of things were, but, airplanes were so stupidly narrow.

He was supposed to have an aisle seat—it wasn’t going to help—but Lois apparently wanted the aisle seat, because she ushered him into the window. Not like that made a difference. He could do whatever he needed to do, one seat or the other didn’t matter.

It was just a sensation he didn’t like.

The agonizingly slow taxiing around the airport fields waiting for takeoff.

The almost imperceptible pressure of the actual takeoff, the one he could always see and hear and even smell in the oh-so-human passengers sharing this “flight”.

The world suddenly shrinking beneath him, everything smaller and smaller, until the actual inhabitants became imperceptible.

Were they even real? Was any of this real? 

He twisted his neck, and he could see a woman in Roxbury stumbling and cursing as she knelt to right the front wheel of the stroller holding her baby. He wanted to go to her, to help her fix that wheel. He couldn’t; he stayed on the plane. This damn plane. Why did it have to be so small? She’d been right at the edge of the crosswalk. He hoped she didn’t try to cross, while it was sticking. He didn’t normally mind small. He liked big, but small was all right. But small and still, while the world went hurtling fast—he just didn’t like the sensation.

He was, he realized, approaching a panic attack.

And he was still stuck here.

 _Can’t ruin everything,_ he told himself. _Can’t ruin the armrest. Can’t,_ he thought, _ruin the plane._

_We’re in the air,_ he thought. _There’s two hundred and thirty-nine people on this plane._

He closed his eyes and listened to all two hundred and thirty-nine heartbeats. 

_All of these people are real,_ he thought. _They’re all living their lives. They’re breathing air because they need oxygen to live._ He didn’t, although his body didn't mind it, and was content to go through the motions of breathing the way he would have had to on Krypton. 

He brushed his hand against the plastic armrest. It didn’t matter, but — 

“Clark,” Lois said, taking his hand in hers. “Are you okay? You said you were a nervous flyer.” 

Clark kept listening to the heartbeats, but he let some back part of his mind narrow itself down, and hear just the one, the unfaltering thrum of it. With her hand touching his, he could feel it, too, ever so slightly, in the split second to took for a beat of blood to rush through the veins, all throughout the body, not quite simultaneous, the heartbeat and the pulse— 

But together. Always, inextricably, together. 

His eyes were closed tight, and because of that, he could see stars. 

He remembered that. Jor-El had given the capsule a window. So that his infant son would look out, on his journey, and in every moment, he would see the infinite blackness, and also the never-ending stars. 

If only he’d been able to reach out and touch them; if only his hand hadn’t hit glass and metal, if only there had been just someone _there_ — 

“Clark?” Lois’s hand rested very gentle over his. “It’s going to be all right.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Speaking of IATA codes, I spent ten minutes scrolling through them on Wikipedia to find one that wasn't taken, because realism in IATA codes is a priority for me. I didn't want someone from Australia to read "MET" and be confused that they weren't actually in Queensland.


End file.
